


silver moon's sparkling (so kiss me)

by bucketofrice



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, a whole bunch of fluff honestly, also there's a doggo, alternate universe - stationery shop, gratuitous stationery mentions, marie-france cameos and a patch mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-27 20:29:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17773721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bucketofrice/pseuds/bucketofrice
Summary: It makes sense, she thinks, for the artist to have found the stationery shop and settled down there, among the pens and paper and notebooks, all physical reminders of the digital things she creates.





	silver moon's sparkling (so kiss me)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentines! Here is a tiny little stationery shop AU that's all fluff and a little bit self-indulgent. My stationery nerd self went a bit wild with this.
> 
> Thank you to [falsettodrop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsettodrop) and [restlessvirtue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlessvirtue) for your constant support and encouragement, and to the Guild for being such lovely people and a veritable force of creativity.
> 
> Title is "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None The Richer.
> 
> Hope you like it!! xx

There’s a little shop tucked in the bottom floor of an old brick building in downtown Toronto, with a wrought iron sign and a cheery little bell that sounds a little bit like how Tinkerbell would laugh if she were real.

 _Bon Mot_ has been sitting on the same corner of this street for nearly two decades, a stalwart presence in an ever-changing landscape. At one point, it was neighboured by a dry cleaner’s, followed by an Indian restaurant, and then a juice bar. Now, it sits next to a bakery and coffee shop, an artisan place that serves all sorts of pastries and cakes and coffee roasts from around the world.

The smell of freshly roasted coffee beans and baked goods wafts through the doors of the café whenever Tessa walks past, and in the summer months, when both _Bon Mot_ and the café keep their doors open to combat the heat, the aroma permeates the air and lingers despite the inks and glues stocked in the shop.

(To Tessa, this proves to be both a blessing and a curse all at once. She’s had to strategically time her morning commutes so she only has enough time to stop by the bakery a few times a week, lest she spend all her money on lattes and the blueberry muffins that Emilio makes extra batches of because he knows she likes them so much.)

It’s a Tuesday in late September, and Tessa has the morning shift. She didn’t check the forecast before she left her apartment, and now she’s shivering as she locks her bike to the stand closest to the shop, hands fiddling with the metal of the lock.

It’s a grisly colour outside, and the fallen leaves are sticking to the pavement, slowly getting ripped up as they’re being walked over.

She glances between the shop and the bakery, weighing a few dollars against some liquid warmth to combat her soaked, shivering state. Caffeine wins out, as it’s prone to do, and ten minutes later, she’s unlocking the front door to _Bon Mot_ with an almond milk cappuccino in hand.

Normally, the morning sun would be seeping in through the front window, bouncing off the bright white walls and shelving. But today, the store is grey and dreary until she turns on the overhead lighting and the bulbs flicker to life.

The store is deliberately all white and warm woods; it’s only the bright pens and pencils and reams of paper that add pops of colour to every corner. _The merchandise is the star of the show, ma cherie,_ she remembers Marie-France, the co-owner, telling her when she first started working at _Bon Mot_ , nearly four years ago. She’d picked up the job part-time as an undergrad at UofT, seeking respite from her course load and an escape from the stressors of campus life.

Now, with graduation over and a shiny diploma hanging in the corner of her bedroom, she’s still at the shop and freelancing as a graphic designer on the side. It makes sense, she thinks, for the artist to have found the stationery shop and settled down there, among the pens and paper and notebooks, all physical reminders of the digital things she creates.

She likes the smell of a new notebook, the feel of weighty paper between her fingers, smooth and cool to the touch.

She likes inky pens, the fluidity of their strokes over the pages, scratchy pencils on cardstock; she’s dabbled in oils and charcoal.

She’s a habitual list-maker, toting around a paper calendar and an assortment of pens and fineliners wherever she goes, even though everything is digital these days. There’s beauty in the simplicity of it, in the neat rows of letters and tick boxes and underlines, in the satisfaction of checking off tasks, one by one.

After dropping her bag and coat in the back, she moves to the front of the shop, bringing newly acquired notebooks and pens with her from the storeroom boxes and touching up the displays. She flicks light switches and straightens out stacks of notebooks and reams of paper, fills up glass containers with brightly coloured pencils and eventually—when everything is organized just so—she flips the little sign that hangs in the window of the store’s front door.

 _Bon Mot_ is officially open for the day.

Satisfied, Tessa heads back behind the till and settles in, checking the main computer for delivery schedules and unread emails as she takes small sips of her cooling cappuccino. She’s not a morning person, by any means, but she’s begun to appreciate the quietness that a morning spent in the shop offers, in the hours before customers arrive.

She typically bides her time by catching up on shop admin, or reading, or sketching or working on freelance projects. _Bon Mot_ does well for itself but stationery shops aren’t typically places of hustle and bustle, so downtime is common.

She appreciates it, likes the solitude of a morning spent behind the till on the days where Marie doesn’t come in until noon.

This Tuesday morning passes like most: quiet time spent sketching (she’s testing a new range of brush pens from Japan which she’ll eventually review on the shop blog she convinced Marie to let her set up), a few deliveries of new stock, a handful of customers, including an elderly gentleman with a tiny dog, some phone calls and email. It’s nearing noon and with that, her eagerly awaited lunch break, when the bell jingles for the first time in a little while.

Tessa looks up from her sketchbook, eyes fixed at the door. She stifles a giggle as she watches the man who just entered wrestle with his umbrella. He eventually wins the battle and deposits it in the stand by the door before running a hand through his damp hair. From the opposite end of the shop, she casts him a glance before speaking.

“Welcome to _Bon Mot_ , anything I can help you find today?”

At her words, he looks over at her. He has a messy, windswept mop of dark brown hair and a sharp jawline, deep-set eyes and prominent brows. They shoot upward when he meets her gaze and she feels her lips quirk into a smile.

He laughs a little, a hoarse, self-deprecating sound, and steps toward the counter. “Actually, yeah. I’m on my way to my niece’s birthday party and I left her card in my apartment.”

He’s wringing his hands together and Tessa can’t help but be endeared.

“Our cards are right this way,” she says, smiling. “How old is your niece turning?”

“Four. She’s in her princesses and dragons phase.”

Tessa chuckles. “I think we all had that phase at one point,” she says, as she leads him over to the display.

He ends up choosing a card with a print, offset by a pale pink border. It’s a starry night with bushes in the background and there’s a red-headed girl in the foreground, dressed in knight’s armour, clutching a sword. The silver of her armour is embellished with flowers and curlicues, and she’s stone-faced, a picture of strength.

When he first spies the card, slightly to the side of their traditional birthday assortment, she sees his eyes widen. He takes the half-step and plucks it from the display, checking to make sure there’s no inscription.

“I know this isn’t a birthday card,” he says, “but it’s perfect.”

Tessa smiles, and the man scratches at the back of his neck sheepishly.

“I want her to know that she can be anything she wants, whether that be a princess or a knight, you know?”

“You’re a good uncle,” she says, without realizing, and quickly backtracks. They’re just talking about cards, for god’s sake. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep.”

He shakes his head. “No, no, it’s okay. Thank you,” he says, and she thinks his smile is one of the best things she’s ever seen.

She rings him up five minutes later, and as he leaves the shop, once again wrestling with that damn umbrella, she can’t fight the smile that grows on her face. Little moments like this, she thinks, are part of the magic of the shop, woven right into its fabric. They’re the reason she’s stayed.

(She pulls out her own laptop an hour later, when there’s a lull in customers, and opens a new file. It seems high time to expand her series of knight illustrations and make some of them into proper birthday cards.)

 

 _Bon Mot_ has a number of well-known customers—from those who pop in for every new shipment, to the regulars who buy the same thing every time they run out, to the art students who swear on their student discount—so the memory of the man with the unruly umbrella and precocious niece doesn’t stick with Tessa for long.

In fact, three weeks after that rainy Tuesday in September, when the shop’s bell jingles and he enters the shop for the second time, she looks up from her perch and finds herself enamoured all over again, oblivious to their past encounter. She notes his build, the sharp cut of his jawline and the mop of mussed hair.

(Later, she’ll think about how much better it looks when it’s dry and dappled with mid-October morning sunlight, how the deep brown takes on a honeyed hue. For now, she’s newly entranced.)

“Welcome to _Bon Mot_ , anything I can help you find today?” she says in her cheeriest voice. He looks a bit frazzled and she gives him an extra-wide smile, hoping to be a bit of a calming presence.

“Do you happen to have thank-you cards?”

“Of course, right this way.” She leads him over to another display of cards and suppresses a giggle when his eyes grow wide as he takes in the sheer number of choices before him.

“Umm,” he starts, “I’m not going to pretend I have tons of experience or opinions here.”

Tessa chuckles. “Who are you looking to thank? Once we’ve figured out the occasion, it’ll be much easier to narrow down the style.”

He lets out a grateful sigh. “Okay, yeah, that seems like a good idea.”

She learns that he’s a police officer who’s just been promoted to Detective Sergeant after a year in a new Division. His mother had instructed him about the importance of saying _thank you_ early on in life, he said, so he’s buying a round of beers for his buddies and writing cards to his bosses. She finds herself endeared by his sincerity and enthusiasm, by the way the tips of his ears redden when he mentions his mother.

She takes him through the shop’s selection of notecards, and, as best she can in layman’s terms, explains the importance of the paper’s weight and texture and colour, walks him through embossing styles, and tries to impart on him the importance of noting the differences between sans serif, serif and script fonts.

By the end, his eyes have gone wide and he seems even more overwhelmed than before. Tessa internally curses herself for having gotten a bit too enthusiastic and makes quick work of selecting a few options that she thinks he might like.

There’s set of white cards with navy block lettering, a black and white set that looks like it was typed on an old-timey typewriter and a box of grey embossed notecards. He studies them all thoughtfully before eventually settling on the grey.

“Bold choice,” she says, a hint of amusement in her tone, and he chuckles.

“Figured I’d pick something other than plain white, you know, make a paper statement.” He winks, raising one eyebrow skyward, and she lets out a laugh.

“Uh huh,” she says, disbelieving. He’s got cheek, and she hates to admit that she quite likes it.

“Hey! You’ve practically made me an expert on the subject in ten short minutes. I’m duly impressed.”

Tessa just shakes her head and starts walking to the register. “Is there anything else I can help you find today?”

“That’s it,” he says, glancing at the cards. She scans them and his gaze travels to the nametag pinned to her apron. “Thank you… Tessa.”

“No worries, that’s what I’m here for,” she says, absently, as she keys in the information.

“I’m Scott, by the way,” he adds on. She looks up from the screen.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Scott,” she says. Though she’s glad she can attach a face to the name, she’s not quite sure why he felt the need to tell it to her. “That’ll be $14.99.”

He hands over his card and their hands brush for the briefest of seconds. It sends a jolt of electricity down her spine, but she brushes it off as static.

“Well, have a nice day,” she says once the purchase has gone through, “I hope your colleagues like the grey.”

She hands him the little paper bag and smiles one last time before nodding and making her way over to a display of fountain pens where an elderly woman has been standing for the past few minutes, seemingly deep in thought. If it weren’t a ludicrous notion, she could have sworn the man with the notecards—Scott, she has to remind herself—let out a disappointed sigh at her departure.

She gives it no further thought as she heads over to help the woman, and nearly misses the soft jingle of the bell that lets her know he’s left the shop.

“That poor man,” she hears from somewhere over her shoulder ten minutes later, when the shop is empty again. “You could have let him off a bit more easy, ma cherie.”

“What?”

She turns to find Marie standing in the doorway to the storeroom, a fond smile on her face. She shakes her head, makes a little tutting sound.

“The man from earlier. He thought you were very pretty.”

“Marie!”

“He was very pretty too,” she says, mischief in her eyes, “but shh, don’t tell Pat.”

Tessa laughs. Marie’s husband Patrice is a theatre critic, but he owns the shop together with his wife, though she’s the one to handle day-to-day operations. Still, Patch is a familiar face at _Bon Mot,_ and Tessa always appreciates his dry wit and quiet demeanour.

“He just wanted some cards, Marie,” Tessa says, straightening out a stack of cardstock.

“Just tell yourself that, mon petit oiseau,” Marie says. “If you ask me, he was flirting with you.”

“He was not!”

“Tessa, what man doesn’t know anything about paper and then makes jokes about it minutes later?”

She tries to come up with a good rebuttal to that one, truly makes a valiant effort to scroll through her mental Rolodex of men who might know a thing or two about paper other than her fellow art students and shop regulars, but she comes up empty. And all of the men she _can_ think of work in the field to begin with, so… She lets out a huff and the cardstock drops onto the shelf.

“He just needed some help, that’s all.”

“Keep telling yourself this,” Marie says, shaking her head with a smile. “Maybe one day it will come true.”

 

After that one October day, Scott begins to pop into _Bon Mot_ on what Tessa could describe as a regular basis.

One day, he runs in desperately needing a small pad and a pen because he’s en route to a crime scene and he left his at the Division. After that, he stops by for more birthday cards, for wrapping paper, for a whole boxful of the same pens he had bought in a haste that one time, because, _oh my god, Tess, the ink is so smooth in these things, holy crap._

He becomes a veritable regular at the shop, always popping in when it’s Tessa’s shift and lingering to strike up conversation. She finds herself laughing every time she talks to him, relishing in the fact that his eyes crinkle and his brows crease adorably when he joins in with that deep belly laugh of his own. Marie keeps shaking her head and smiling and tutting every time he leaves, and Tessa has to fight the deep blush that creeps up her cheeks at the very mention of his name.

It’s January and bitter cold when he shows up at _Bon Mot_ in the morning, shaking off snow flurries and stomping his boots on the mat. He smiles as the bell jingles and it widens when he meets Tessa’s gaze.

The shop is empty save for Tessa—it’s a Monday morning and there’s a risk of frostbite outside—and she greets him from behind the counter, sparing him a quick look and a smile before looking back at her laptop and drawing tablet with concentration, a crease forming on her forehead to accompany her furrowed brow.

She doesn’t register the aroma of coffee or the warmth that permeates from the paper cup Scott is carrying until he approaches the till, setting two cups down gently so he can pull off his gloves. She looks up, then at the coffee in confusion, then back at Scott.

“It’s an almond milk cappuccino,” he says by way of explanation. “I went to the café next door and asked if you had a regular order. I hope it’s okay.”

He shrugs his shoulders just as she says, “it’s perfect,” and then, after a pause, “thank you.”

“I don’t have to be in at work until a bit later this morning,” he says with a sheepish smile, twirling the sleeve on his coffee cup. He picks at the cardboard where it’s glued together at the edges. “And you said you try not to buy coffees on Mondays but it’s so cold so I figured—”

“Thank you.” She smiles at him fully and ducks her head shyly when she sees his eyes crinkle.

“It’s quiet this morning,” he says, to break the silence.

She takes a sip of her drink. “Mhmm. It’s nice, though. Means I can get other work done.” She gestures vaguely toward the setup before her.

“What are you working on, Tess?” he asks, and his eyes light up like a little kid at Christmas. He steps behind the counter and tries to steal a glance at her screen.

She shuts it quickly, shaking her head and wrapping her arms across the computer, as if to shield it from his view.

“It’s nothing—none of it is ready yet.”

“C’mooon,” he whines, poking at her side. “I wanna see!” He’s like a petulant child mixed with an overeager puppy and she bursts out laughing at the image.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“Nope,” he says, popping the _p,_ a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

“Fine.” She opens her laptop, purposefully angling it away from him as she searches for a file. “Here. These are completed and we’re about to order another batch.”

She’s pulled up her knights series: girls in suits of armour adorned with flowers and suns and stars, glancing at the viewer with steely gazes. There’s a redhead with a sword, a brunette with bangs and a bob, and a girl with coarse dark hair clutching a helmet. It’s night and the stars and moon sparkle in the background; shrubbery completes the scene.

“We stock these as cards and prints,” she says, babbling to fill space because she hates showing off her work like this, hates imposing. “Someone bought one as a birthday card a few months back, so we’re putting new text inside for some of them…”

“That was me,” he says. “Back in September.”

“Really?” she says, eyes wide, and then when it dawns on her, “Oh my god, you’re umbrella guy!”

He laughs, and the sound of it stirs something deep in her chest. She determinedly ignores it.

“I suppose I am, although Scott works just fine—it’s my name after all.” He has a shit-eating grin on his face and she doesn’t know whether to be endeared or annoyed by it, or both.

They talk for a while—about work and life and Scott’s dog Lady (yes, she’s a Cocker Spaniel, and yes, he named her after the movie, and yes, Tessa is now even more endeared than she was before and still categorically denying it)—until their coffee goes cold and they both down the remnants in one gulp, wincing and laughing at each other’s pained expressions.

When Scott checks his watch and realizes he has to head to the Division, Tessa is surprised to find herself genuinely sad at the prospect of him leaving. They had formed an unlikely friendship over the past few weeks, she’s realized, and she looks forward to when he drops in, looks forward to his presence and his jokes and his oddly expressive eyebrows.

He looks over at her apologetically and moves to gather his coat and gloves, pausing as he’s putting on his scarf. He takes a step toward the counter and grabs a sticky note off the pad that sits by the computer and a pen from the blue cup next to it. “I know this is probably the worst time but I just wanted you to have this,” he says, not taking his eyes off the paper. He scribbles something and hands it to her before zipping up his coat and heading out the door.

“See ya, Tess!”

She barely manages a goodbye before she hears the bell jingle and the door slams shut, sending in a gust of wind. She finally takes a look at the sticky note in her hand, at the messy scrawl and the seven numbers that stare back at her.

_Oh._

 

She texts Scott a gif of a puppy and a _hello_ the morning he leaves her his number, and things start taking shape from there. They text each other silly things, and mundane things, make stupid jokes and Tessa can’t help but think it’s so _natural_ to be talking to him like this—it’s like they’ve known each other for years.

(Marie, ever-observant and never one to hold back, shoots her meaningful looks when she’s been glancing at her phone for a beat too long, her lips quirking up in a smile.)

It’s the formation of a tentative friendship, of getting to know one another via silly messages and cups of coffee and sketches and dog videos and pens. It’s easy and it’s comfortable and she wonders idly if this is the first time she warmed up to someone this fast.

She might be getting a bit sentimental, she thinks, because of the fact that she hasn’t slept much in the past few days and has had far too much coffee and is generally more stressed out than she’s been in a while. She’s sitting at the shop at the beginning of February and it’s pushing eleven thirty at night. Right at this precise moment it feels like she made a terrible mistake when she told Marie she’d stay here to work, finishing the final details of a set of commissioned posters for a dance showcase at the National Ballet. Patch and his myriad connections had done wonders to land her the job—as had her own past with the company’s school.

A career in graphic design and marketing was never the goal for Tessa, not from the start, but it became her backup plan when her shins gave up two years before the end of ballet school. She was on track to join the company, but two surgeries and countless hours of physio and rehab and relearning the mechanics of her body weren’t enough.

Her legs failed her even though she sliced them open twice.

She still dances sometimes—making sure not to strain her muscles like she used to—but she’s shifted gears in the rest of her life.

She’s deep into refining the edge of a silhouette of a dancer, her workspace illuminated only by a small table lamp, when she hears it.

A crashing sound.

Glass breaking.

The jingling of the bell.

Rummaging.

The heavy plodding of footsteps.

She freezes, her breath hitches, goosebumps break out all over her skin. She hears footsteps approaching the rear end of the shop and she sucks in a breath, closing her eyes. She’s in the back room, thank goodness, but she has no idea if whoever is here knows where they’re going.

She cracks one eye open, then two, takes a deep breath and steels herself. She turns off the light, closes her laptop as quietly as she can and inches to the back corner of the room, trying not to make a sound. Her heart is hammering in her chest and blood rushes to her ears.

Cold sweat builds up on the back of Tessa’s neck and her hands are shaking. She tries to regulate her breathing—unsuccessfully—and finally fishes her phone out of the pocket of her fleece pullover. Fingers trembling, she unlocks the screen and turns down the brightness before typing out one text.

 _Someone is breaking in at the shop and i’m in the back_  

She hits send, closes her eyes and, for the first time in over ten years, she prays.

It feels like hours have passed by the time she hears police sirens and shouts and more footsteps and she can finally breathe again. She lets out a great shuddering exhale and slides down the wall she’d pressed herself against, slipping down onto the floor and hugging her knees to her chest. Her breaths are still shallow and laboured, and she’s still sitting in total darkness.

She knows she should move but she can’t bring herself to do it.

It’s like she’s anchored to the floor.

She doesn’t know how much time passes, but the next thing she registers is the back room door opening and the bright beam of a flashlight. It blinds her for a second before the light disappears and the overhead light flicks on instead. “Tess,” she hears from the other side of the room, “you in here?”

She makes a pathetic little sound from her corner on the floor and Scott is by her side in a matter of seconds. He crouches down and gently places a hand on her shoulder. She finally looks up at him and the genuine concern on his face is what breaks her.

She doesn’t feel the tears until Scott wipes one of them off her cheek, and she sniffles as he whispers soothingly to her. She lets out a shaky breath and looks up at him through watery eyes. “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course.”

Everything moves quickly after that. She composes herself and gets up from the floor, follows Scott to the showroom so she can assess the damages and provide information to his colleagues. Tessa surveys the scene—the strewn-about papers and ransacked bins and missing computer from the till. The front window is broken and glass shards litter the floor.

She answers the questions one-by-one, her face blank and hands still shaking.

 _Did they take anything valuable?_ Just the cash in the till and the computer.

 _What else is missing?_ Some reams of drafting paper; other things are broken but they didn’t take much.

 _Did she see anyone enter the store?_ No.

 _Has there been a break-in before?_ No, because why would anyone break into a stationery store?

After, when she’s through and the techs have secured what little evidence there is, she heads back to the storeroom to collect her things. She takes a minute after she’s put her laptop in her bag and shut off the light, to breathe and to try to calm down. Scott walks in, making sure to announce his presence so as not to spook her, and asks if she’s headed home.

Tessa nods, fiddling with the strap of her bag.

Scott clears his throat.

“I live close to the shop,” he says, his tone cautious. “You could come and stay at my place for the night, so you don’t have to be alone…” He trails off and scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I have a couch and a puppy and a terrible DVD collection...”

She nods, timidly. She needs to put him out of his misery. “Are you sure?”

“Of course, T. I wouldn't have offered otherwise.”

 

Scott’s apartment is small and cozy and warm, but his dog is even smaller. She starts barking and leaping up at Tessa’s leg from the moment Scott unlocks the door and she can’t help but crouch down and say hi.

She’s got soft fur and loves to give kisses and Tessa is enamoured in an instant. Scott quietly takes her bag and coat and lets her play with Lady for a bit and she almost doesn’t notice, not until he addresses her from the kitchen. “Do you want some tea? Or hot chocolate?”

They’re sat on his couch with steaming mugs a little later—chamomile for him, packet hot chocolate for her—and Lady is sprawled out between them. She’s laid her head on Tessa’s lap and her tail wags when she gets scratches behind her ears.

They’re watching an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine (because it’s too late for a movie and Scott loves to point out how the show is different from real life as a cop) and Tessa begins drawing parallels between his puppy dog personality and Jake Peralta’s antics. It leaves her giggling softly and Scott turns to look at her, face full of mirth and endearment.

“What’s so funny?”

She blushes, trying her best not to notice how his eyes crinkle and his smile quirks at the corner of his lips. She shakes her head and focuses on Lady again, who’s started pawing at her thigh.

“You’d think she never gets attention with how she acts when people come over,” Scott says, chuckling. He gets the dogs attention, laughing when she tilts her head to look at him. “You want a treat?”

She leaps up off the couch at that and starts running around the apartment and Tessa starts laughing.

Scott grabs a treat from the jar on his kitchen counter and Tessa picks up their empty mugs so she can place them by his sink. She figures it’s the least she can do. Scott holds his hand out and motions for Lady to sit, and she does so, obediently keeping her eyes on him as he holds the treat out to his side in a closed fist.

She waits for ten seconds—Tessa is duly impressed—and then he gives her the treat.

“Good girl,” he says, and a shiver runs down Tessa’s spine. _God damn it._ Her brain starts betraying her, starts conjuring up images of Scott saying that in a deep husky timbre, when he’s under her, over her, everywhere. She flushes at the thought and suddenly his apartment is far too warm.

She presses her eyes shut and takes a deep breath, willing the thoughts to go away by the time her eyelashes open again. She can’t go there, she really can’t, because they just became friends and she’s only here because there was a break-in.

He steps toward her (she’s thankfully opened her eyes at this point). “We should probably sort out some pjs for you.” She nods. Scott heads to his room and reemerges a few minutes later with a stack of clothes, a blanket and a pillow. “I grabbed the smallest things I could find; there’s an extra toothbrush on the sink.”

“Thank you.”

She gets changed and brushes her teeth, smiling as she folds the hem of his sweatpants over thrice so they don’t slip off her narrow hips. They’re Leafs sweats and she’s wearing a Detroit Tigers tee and somehow that’s so inherently _Scott_ to her.

When she reemerges, he’s made the sofa into a bed for her.

They stand in his living room for a minute in awkward silence, neither quite knowing what to say next.

“Lady might join you on the couch, just a warning,” Scott says, “I can bring her to my room if that’s a problem—”

“No, no, that’s okay!”

“Oh, good.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, uh,” he clears his throat, “goodnight then, Tess.”

“Goodnight, Scott.”

He takes a half step out of the room but stops abruptly, turning back to her and taking two steps forward. He presses a kiss to her cheek, quick as a wink, a chaste affair, but it makes her heart flutter. “Sweet dreams.”

She’s lying on his couch fifteen minutes later and she can’t sleep. Her mind is re-playing the ‘kiss’ on loop and she has no idea what she’s supposed to do. What did he _mean_ when he did that? Is this just a friend thing? Is this more than a friend thing?

Does _she_ want this to be more than a friend thing?

She’s tossing and turning and replaying all her past interactions with Scott in her head, from that first meeting in September to all the silly texts and coffees he’s brought her to the gravelly tone she imagines his voice would take on if she were lying next to him right now, not a room away on his grey sofa.

Damn it.

She wants this to be more than a friend thing.

Okay then.

She’s going to tell him tomorrow, she decides. She’s going to kiss him on the cheek in the morning and see how he reacts and then she’s going to be the strong independent woman her mother raised her to be and tell him she’d like to see him sometime, without the shop or late-night break-ins involved. She’ll tell him, and it’ll be perfect.

She falls asleep with a plan firmly in her head—because when Tessa Virtue plans for something, she sees it through—and doesn’t wake up until early the next morning, when she feels something wet on her cheek. It’s Lady, and she giggles at the feeling, wrestling the dog off her chest as she sits up.

It’s still early and she’s pretty sure that Scott is still asleep. She starts folding the blanket he brought out for her and it snags on a corner of the couch, sending a magazine falling to the floor. When she picks it up, she notices a pink card fell down too.

It’s got hearts on the front—Valentine’s is in three days—and she feels guilty immediately after she picks it up and opens it.

Snooping is bad, and she knows it, but she can’t help herself.

The handwriting inside is loopy, and her heart drops to her stomach when she reads the text.

_Happy Valentine’s to the biggest stud I know._

_Love you,_

_Cara_

She throws the card back on the side table like she’s been burned.

Fuck.

 

She leaves Scott’s apartment right after he wakes up that morning, and tries to ignore the confusion in his face. She thanks him for his kindness, pets Lady one last time and pulls the door closed behind her.

It’s Saturday, so she spends the day on her sofa with a rerun of Pride & Prejudice, chocolate ice cream and her fuzziest socks. If she sheds a tear, it’s solely because of Mr. Darcy and his and Lizzie’s conversation in the pouring rain, okay?

Scott texts her an hour after she gets home.

She ignores it.

Four hours later, the guilt eats at her and she replies, then turns off her phone entirely and takes a long bath.

On Tuesday, it’s Valentine’s Day and she’s in for work at the shop. Normally, she loves the holiday, loves the cards and chocolates and flowers and sentimentality of it all.

But this year?

Well, she heard about someone planning an anti-Valentine’s Day once, and it feels appropriate for her current mood. She lets out a hoarse chuckle when she thinks back to lying on Scott’s couch and trying to convince herself she didn’t want him.

It seemed so easy then, to tell herself all she wanted was friendship.

But now, knowing it’s all she’s going to get… well, reality is a bit of a disappointment.

She lets out a huff and closes the email tab on the shop’s new computer—the window is still being fixed but otherwise, _Bon_ _Mot_ is open for business—getting up to head back to the storeroom and grab more stock.

Ten minutes later, she comes back out from the storeroom to find a small envelope sitting behind the till. It’s weighty cream cardstock, smooth to the touch; her name is scrawled across the front in inky black. The penmanship is shaky—it’s like the writer has tried so hard to concentrate that their strokes became uneven.

She slips her finger into the crease and tears it open, gently. Inside is a card, blush pink with a small bouquet of watercolour flowers. There’s a single line of text.

_Tessa, will you be my Valentine?_

_\- Scott_

He emerges from behind a spinning display of notebooks, hands behind his back and a sheepish smile on his face. She notes the blush on his cheeks and the way he’s alternating between meeting her gaze and averting his eyes.

“So?” he asks, finally.

He reveals a cup of coffee from behind his back; there’s a red heart drawn on the side and she can’t help the smile that starts spreading across her face.

She grabs a pen and starts writing on the opposite side of the card, careful not to look up and let her face give her away.

She thinks idly of the card she saw in his apartment, and there’s a moment where she hesitates. But then she starts writing, because Scott wouldn’t be the type of guy to string her and another girl along, that much she’s sure of.

When she’s done, she closes the card again and steps toward Scott.

“It’s an almond milk cappuccino.”

“Thank you.” She takes it and sets it on a shelf and holds out the card so Scott can read it.

She watches him open it and grins when his eyes scan the page. He laughs and looks up, wordlessly asking for confirmation.

“Yeah?”

She laughs, a free and happy sound, and she squeals when he picks her up and spins her around. She’s never been gladder for an empty shop than when he sets her back down and tilts her chin up with one finger, letting his eyes flit from her lips to her eyes and back again.

Her eyes slip shut when her lips meet his and all coherent thought flies to the wayside.

The card falls out of his hand and lands on the floor with a soft thud.

Inside, she drew two boxes, labelled _yes_ and _no._

She checked the former.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love. Come yell at me on [Tumblr](http://good-things-come-in-threes.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/_bucketofrice).


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